New Zealand "Gender Balanced" Cabinet

[CaveMum]

Apparently the NZ Cabinet is now 50/50 men/women. Great news, if it is true, though the cynic in me wonders what the Cabinet looks like when actual biology is taken into account.

Anyone know more details?

New Zealand cabinet reaches gender equality for the first time - BBC News

I saw some nz media posts on this online and the replies were hilarious! Posies trip certainly brought this insanity to the attention of more kiwis. As for what it means for women when the country includes men in that group and the PM needs time to consider what the definition of women is, I’d say it means nothing and doesn’t change or improve anything for women and girls. Some of those women in parliament were at the protest against women speaking remember.

As far as I know, the women in the NZ Cabinet are all biological women. The only trans politician in NZ of which I'm aware is the very famous Georgina Beyers, who recently died and was a trailblazer in many ways.

It is true. Why would it not be?
And yes, @shiningcuckoo, Georgina Beyer has been the only transgender politician to be elected to NZ parliament.

Yes, the 50% in Cabinet are all biological women.

As has been said - Georgina Beyer has been the only trans politician in NZ (at least at national level, I'm not sure about local).

And yet New Zealand has the worst domestic violence rate in the Western world and doesn’t allow any dissent from their TRA policies.
it does seem a contradiction to the image that they try to portray.

That graph could be misleading. Maybe the people in countries to the left are more willing to report domestic violence than those on the right

NZ has long held the sad title of having the highest rate of domestic violence in the developed world, for as long as I can remember. And no, not all violence is reported. So the figures will be higher. Many get off without a conviction, especially if they play rugby.

When we lived there for a while I was stunned to see tv adverts, and billboards at the entrance to towns, explaining that domestic violence is not good!

If they play rugby? Seriously? At least the UK occasionally finds a sportsperson guilty of rape.

If they play rugby? Seriously?

Yes, everyone gets a free hit normally but All Blacks and even lesser rugby players, can get away without even a conviction. There’s two current all blacks, neither kiwis both imported, who have been let off without conviction because otherwise they’d be deported and couldn’t ever play. Sevu Reece beat his partner on the street, Shannon Frizell punched a woman in a club and threatened her the next day. They’re just the latest. In 2004 an All Black beat his 5 month pregnant wife, no conviction and permanent name suppression. I think he may have missed a game though 😐

Absolutely!!!

Look at Italy and Estonia right down there at the bottom, hardly bastions of safety or progressiveness for women

I'm Irish and I'm also surprised to see Ireland so far down the list. I would agree it's likely lack of reporting and/ or convictions.

I’m not sure about that list. But every bit of data we have confirms NZ is top of the list for developed countries. I don’t think people are aware of just how bad the problem is there

Italy maybe, but that's not fair to Estonia, which is a fairly progressive, high-tech Nordic country in many ways. They have some of the longest paid maternity and shared parental leave in the world (a close friend lives there and said it's 18 months between both parents).

https://www.eesti.ee/en/family/benefits-and-allowances/shared-parental-benefit-and-parental-leave

Exactly this. I mean, Mexico's in the middle!

Bit of straw man fallacy at play here! The fact that 50% of the cabinet IS female isn't refutable by NZs shameful rates of domestic violence. One isn't disproved by the other.
As for family violence, it's well recognized that this is an absolute blight and is a very long standing, talked about issue in NZ. It's really unlikely that it occurs because some blokes play sport, rather a combination of toxic masculinity and colonisation.

*rather a combination of toxic masculinity and colonisation.

Colonisation? How? Every race has a problem with violence against women.

The point is having 50% women isn’t relevant to anything in NZ, it’s still a deeply misogynistic country with a very big problem with VAWG.

But colonisation particularly impacts on family violence in Aotearoa. As does poverty. I agree that NZ is a misogynistic country and there is a problem with violence towards women and children. There is also a problem with violence towards Māori, so if you are a Māori woman, you're particularly screwed. But this doesn't take away from the fact that 50% of the cabinet are women and that there is no trickery happening, as suggested by the OP. Yep, this statistic seems to have no impact on all of the wrongs towards woman and girls in NZ at the moment, but that wasn't the premise of this discussion.

But colonisation particularly impacts on family violence in Aotearoa.

I know it’s not the discussion, but I’m Maori and a victim of family violence so I’m interested in how you’re insisting this is about colonisation. I don’t think it is, at all. It’s a way for Maori men to try and minimise their responsibility.

Also while this cabinet may not include transwomen, future cabinets can and would include them in a stat like this. That’s a problem.

I’m not suggesting any trickery, but think it was a totally justified question to ask if a country, where the PM himself says he cannot answer the question “what is a woman”, is accurately reporting on “gender balance”.

FWIW they really should report it as “sex balanced” rather than “gender balanced? After all aren’t we told there are numerous “genders” - 105 is the most recent number I can find.

It’s all very binary of them isn’t it…

NZ hasn't always been "left wing". And those DV rates have been topping the charts my whole lifetime- I'm 55.

All those women in parliament, many female PM's & Governor Generals have done fuck all to improve things for NZ women or address the DV rates. And parliament passed self id unanimously - not a single vote against it.

Yup @TheClitterati exactly right

@Whaeanui
I don't think I'm 'insisting', rather stating my opinion, which isn't a particularly controversial or groundbreaking opinion either. I'm pretty comfortable with it as it's shared by the late Moana Jackson.
Big picture - the traditional bonds and safeguards of Māori family life were broken by colonisation and replaced by a system where women and children are chattels of men. Resources to support women and children in wider whānau settings were destroyed and stolen. Toxic masculinity became prized. Add in poverty, societal demands for assimilation and bare faced discrimination towards groups of people who prize mana and you have perfect conditions for everyday violence. Smaller scale - all men who habitually practice violence towards women and children minimize their actions. Māori men may use colonisation as their 'excuse' but that doesn't make colonisation an invalid explanation. Other men use poverty, generational family violence, trauma and mental health issues as excuses - of course there is nothing that should minimize their behaviours but it doesn't mean that these factors arent impactful.
Coming back to the original premise of this post, the Aotearoa New Zealand political landscape is complex and often contradictory partly because of colonisation and hamfisted attempts to reindigenise. It's all early days. NZ is no longer an outpost of mother England and needs to find its own way through its stance on the rights of girls and women and self id. And part of that isn't undermining our women politicians whose achievements are in spite of the confines of a toxic patriarchy that actually is the result of European interference.

There's a strong tendency in certain parts of the political left now to really romantisize non-western peoples, particularly indigenous peoples, and blame colonial forces for the appearance of bad things in that culture. It's the same kind of political viewpoint that wants to see all bad behaviour as caused by some kind of systemic issue. It always seems to be colonial powers who imported ideas like racism, division by caste, slavery, sexism, whatever.

Of course some things are imports or a result of other kinds of social breakdown. But I think many people have become a little skeptical of simply accepting those kinds of claims, they are made too often and often despite evidence to the contrary. So they tend to want specific claims and evidence or reasons for holding them.